1. His ratings weren't going anywhere. Donahue compares his situation to the time it took FOX to overtake CNN, but FOX was a whole new channel (people gotta find it on the dial) and it was trending sharply upward for a long time. Phil's show was stuck in the cellar with no prospect of improving.

2. I don't have figures, but you have to assume that Donahue's name recognition is still tremendous. Everyone knows who he is and that his show was out there; people just didn't want to watch it. No amount of time will change that. Sure, NBC gave a little-known show called "Seinfeld" time to build name recognition -- but there was no need to do that for, say, the Chevy Chase late night show; if it didn't start well, it wasn't going to get any better. Like Chase, Donahue just couldn't recapture the magic of the mid-seventies. He should have had the grace to just admit that. But in Donahue's world, it's always somebody else's fault.